Lego For Professionals: The Lego Architecture Studio

Lego For Professionals: The Lego Architecture Studio

You’ve seen The Lego Movie, been to Legoland, played the Lego video games, shopped the Lego flagship Flatiron store just around the corner from Duggal…and in all you’ve experienced the refreshing dose of nostalgia that makes Legos as intriguing to adults as they are to kids.

The Danish brand and largest toymaker in the world capitalizes on our innate fascination with modular clicking circles through brilliant partnerships and innovative products. The genius behind Lego is that they’re marketing to a) children, b) adults who are buying for their children, c) adults who are buying for their children but also wistfully buying for themselves, and d) professionals.

“Professionals,” you ask? Indeed. The Lego Architecture Studio is a 1,200-piece kit aimed at professional builders – architects, designers, engineers and contractors. The most obvious visual cue that these Legos are for adult builders is that they’re monochrome, stripped of their traditional bright primary colors.

The kit offers 76 unique components, and comes with a 250-page guidebook with input and design examples from leading architecture firms. It sells for $159.99.

“Anyone with an interest in architecture can now create their own Lego original designs, as well as building mini architectural masterpieces such as the Eiffel Tower and the Trevi Fountain,” a Lego spokesperson said in a statement.

Childhood fascination with Legos has long been linked to careers in architecture and engineering, and Lego has done a fantastic job of fostering that link over the years.

“Architecture Studio takes Lego fans back to the basic building bricks that have inspired generations of aspiring architects, including me,” said urban planner and founder of Common Office, Finn Williams, according to Dezeen.

In 2005, Lego gave three tons of bricks to Olafur Eliasson for the Collectivity Project, which served as an open forum for residents of post-communist Tirana, Albania to construct their vision for the city’s future. And in 2012, Lego donated 1 million bricks to Dutch architect Winy Maas, who built a real-life Lego city of more than 600 skyscrapers at the Venice Biennale. The Guardian provides a great in-depth piece on Lego’s impact in the professional world.

The Lego Architecture Studio goes to show that all the software in the world can never fully replace the value of tactile learning. There’s something exceedingly comforting about picturing a team of esteemed New York City architects, somewhere in a swank Midtown office, casually huddled around a set of Legos – smartphones to the side, computers on sleep, inspiration through the roof.